George Floyd's family has filed a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and the four officers charged in his death.
On May 25, 19-year Minneapolis police veteran Derek Chauvin was accompanied by officer Tou Thao and rookie cops J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane in the arrest of 46-year-old George Floyd over an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.
Bodycam footage from the arrest shows Chauvin resting his knee on the back of Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, as Keung and Lane helped to restrain Floyd's lower body, and Thao worked to keep members of the public at a distance.
J. Alexander Kueng is confronted by a member of the public in a supermarket:Throughout the arrest, Floyd reportedly told the officers that he could not breathe more than 20 times.
Following the arrest, Floyd was transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. All four officers were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department shortly after.
Per the BBC, the Civil rights attorney for the Floyd family, Ben Crump, said that the African-American's death is part of a "public health crisis" in black America,
Filed in US District Court in Minnesota, Mr Crump announced the Floyd family's lawsuit against Minneapolis on Wednesday (July 15), and states that the family will be seeking unspecified monetary damages on behalf of George Floyd's children and siblings.
Per CNN, Crump said in a statement:
"It was not just the knee of officer Derek Chauvin on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, but it was the knee of the entire Minneapolis Police Department on the neck of George Floyd that killed him.
"The city of Minneapolis has a history of policies and procedures and deliberate indifference when it comes to the treatment of arrestees, especially Black men. […]
"This is an unprecedented case, and with this lawsuit, we seek to set a precedent to make it financially prohibitive, so police won’t kill marginalized people, especially Black people, in the future."
Crump also described Floyd's death as "torture", and called the fallout from his passing "the tipping point for policing in America."
Crump added, "Everything seems to have stopped and got shut down in America during the coronavirus pandemic except racism and discrimination and police brutality against Black and brown people."
Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder. The three other officers have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
A Minneapolis judge has set a tentative trial date for all four men on March 8, 2021.
Floyd's death sparked mass protests - some peaceful, some violent - across the US and in major cities across the world, as people gathered to call out the systemic injustices carried out against black people - not least seen by the recent deaths of Floyd, but also that of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and more.
As well as a call for justice, these ongoing protests are also demanding an end to police brutality and the racism that is so deeply entrenched in America and the western world.
The message is simple: Black lives matter.
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